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Anti-Wall Street sentiment still prevails
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A FEW years ago, Larry Summers, then the director of US President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, held a private meeting with some of Wall Street’s top bankers and executives.
Although the worst of the financial crisis was over by then, Summers — now seen as a candidate to be the next chairman of the US Federal Reserve — chastised bankers for being out of touch, saying they didn’t understand how angry average Americans were with them, according to a participant in the meeting.
A spokeswoman for Summers said it sounded like something he might have said, though she did not provide more specific confirmation.
Five years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and two years after the start of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Wall Street has drastically changed under an onslaught of new rules and by some accounts become more conscious of its image on Main Street.
Still, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Main Street animus against bankers and their role in the financial crisis persists.
The anti-Wall Street sentiment bodes ill for the sector: It serves to pressure lawmakers and regulators into further restraining perceived excesses on Wall Street, threatening the long-term profitability of the industry.
The poll of more than 1,400 adults, representing a cross-section of the US population, shows that half of the respondents believe there has not been enough reform to prevent a future crisis.
Up to 44 percent of those polled believe the government should not have bailed out financial institutions, while only 22 percent thought it was the right move. Fifty-three percent think not enough was done to prosecute bankers; 15 percent were satisfied with the effort.
Henry Paulson, the former US Treasury Secretary who was the architect of the bailouts in 2008, said he believes the government botched its chance to portray them as a necessity for the financial stability of all Americans.
“I never was able to convince the average American that what we did with these rescues wasn’t for Wall Street but it was for them,” Paulson said in an interview.
Judith Klatt, 67, a retiree from Wisconsin who responded to the survey, said she’s angry at the government and Wall Street. “I think they’ve both, in plain language, screwed the public and are still doing so.”
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